Mazzetti's Finish To Mahler's 10th

The American Mahler scholar Remo Mazzetti's 1983-85 edition is the latest of several completions of Mahler's final symphony. For about three decades, the second of Deryck Cooke's two realizations--the so-called "finally revised full-length performing version"--has been the most widely accepted and recorded. Yet another completion of the Mahler 10th, by Chicagoan Clinton Carpenter, also has recently appeared on CD, with Harold Farberman conducting.

Based on intimate knowledge of the previous editions, the Mazzetti version, in its contrapuntal invention and orchestrational resource, steers a convincing middle course between Carpenter (who went too far, recomposing much of the score in an idiosyncratic, unMahlerian manner) and Cooke II (who didn't go far enough). The Mazzetti is not without flaws but it rings true to ears familiar with the other panels of Mahler's valedictory triptych, "Das Lied von der Erde" and the Ninth Symphony. Its musical gestures feel like Mahler's, rather than like merely a scholarly gloss on the sketches. Crack detective work, intuition and dedication meet at the windswept summit.

This first recording, while not ideal, should help to promote its considerable virtues among the concert and record-buying public. Slatkin gave the U.S. premiere of the Mahler/Mazzetti in St. Louis in March 1995. Considering this is a live recording, one would have hoped for a higher degree of electricity from the performance: Everything sounds a little too careful, a little too literal, for all the evident skill of execution. It's as if Slatkin the educator (buyers may hear his comparison of the various editions of the Mahler 10th on a companion CD that RCA includes with the performance at no additional charge) had influenced the work of Slatkin the conductor.

We will never know, of course, precisely how Mahler himself would have realized his 10th Symphony, which still leaves the field open to further completions. Meanwhile, the Mazzetti deserves a place in the repertory, alongside Cooke I and Cooke II, and the well-engineered RCA certainly will suffice until some other record company takes a crack at this fascinating, deeply moving musical torso.